Ultra Light

My family likes to camp. I enjoy it when I actually sleep well (rare for me) and have yummy food to eat. When we camp as a family, the food is amazing. My mom is really good at planning meals and we eat great Dutch oven dinners.

When we go backpacking, it is another manner. I don’t know of anyone who is willing to carry a cast iron Dutch oven, the charcoal, or the specific food in a backpack. It just isn’t worth it.

There was a time in my dad’s life when a fifty pound backpack was acceptable, not so anymore. My dad is a great ultra light backpacker, now. He has everything down to a science and makes backpacking a pleasure, now. His meals are satisfying and tasty, now. It wasn’t always so.

I was the first test subject for his ultra light backpacking. He has since apologized and I bare no ill will, anymore. If you had asked me two days into the trip, I probably would have said something much different. I was miserable. But by golly, my backpack was just over twenty pounds, for a four day, three night trip.
I mentioned in the beginning that I rarely sleep well. This is even true in a bed, camping is even worse. In the backpacking escapade my dad decided that the extra weight of my mummy bag should be replaced with a fleece like sleeping bag. (Where we were going, this wouldn’t be a problem for most people.) I don’t really remember sleeping the first night, or the second night.

As for food, well. I never realized how picky of an eater I was. I didn’t use to like cream cheese on bagels. (That has since changed.) For breakfast we had bagels and strawberry cream cheese. I needed the protein so I munched it down. On the third day of hiking we stopped for lunch. While everyone else in our group pulled out something edible, my dad handed me the strawberry cream cheese and . . . the largest cucumber I’ve ever seen. I think it weighed in at a pound. He’d found the largest cucumber he could. My lunch consisted of only that cucumber with strawberry cream cheese. I didn’t even get halfway through the cucumber. (My dad didn’t finish it either.)

When we reached camp I was starving, and exhausted. While everyone else hiked around and looked at the beautiful scenery I slept. That night my dad was feeling bad about the awful lunch, and probably hungry himself, he pulled out the store bought backpacker’s meal. We feasted on teriyaki chicken and raspberry crumble.

The trip is long over but it is now the family joke that dad will feed people cucumber with strawberry cream cheese. His menu is the equivalent of a Dutch oven masterpiece without all the extra weight.